Hopeful step for food security

The Caribbean Supermarket Association (CSA), launched on Tuesday, has boldly taken up the challenge of making food security for the region a practical, boots-on-the-ground initiative.

To do that, it must also encourage farmers to work with it collectively.

Rajiv Diptee, the president of the Supermarket Association of TT, had broadened his ambitions for supermarkets by forming the Caribbean Supermarket Association, an organisation that has as one of its ambitions improving regional food security and greater market integration.

The CSA is already looking to strike up mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders in Guyana, following on initiatives between the leaders of TT and that country to improve the region's capacity to collaboratively grow more of its own food.

The CSA has acknowledged that organisation between supermarket owners in other Caribbean countries may need to be strengthened to make this project a reality.

But first on its agenda is likely to be appointing representative regional members to play key roles in the countries of the region to evangelise the message and broaden its effective footprint, while encouraging the development of strong regional collaborations by each island’s supermarkets.

The CSA’s conversations can’t only be with its business peers and governments.

To realise these ambitious goals, the organisation must also reach out to farmers and other food producers in the region to build a profile of what resources are available, what can be developed, and most meaningfully, what it can sell in its key role as the contact point for many Caribbean shoppers.

TT alone has a food import bill of more than $5 billion, and the CSA is ideally positioned to understand where the most effective interventions should be made to leverage the existing and readily expanded capacities of food producers and packagers in the region.

The collective wisdom of regional supermarket managers and buyers makes possible another level of thinking about the elusive matter of regional food security. There is a need to build a comprehensive understanding about what can be grown in the region and what can be sold, while assessing the realities of transport costs and regional tariffs.

These factors must be defined with detail and clarity to persuade regional governments to co-operate supportively while ensuring fair returns throughout the production and procurement chain. An integration of commerce, agricultural potential and sovereign national interests has eluded Caricom for decades, so the challenge the CSA faces is significant.

This is an opportunity to design an infrastructure of production, storage, shipping and legal frameworks that might lubricate the flow of goods for sale between Caribbean countries to the benefit of all.

It's a bold ambition, but it's also worth the considerable effort.